NSA has become a four-letter word in US

Daniel McAdams is Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. He served as foreign affairs advisor to US Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) from 2001 until Dr. Paul’s retirement at the end of 2012. From 1993-1999 he worked as a journalist based in Budapest, Hungary, including as editorial page editor of the Budapest Sun. He also served as special rapporteur for the British Helsinki Human Rights Group while based in Europe, monitoring human rights and elections on the ground in various contentious states, including Albania during the 1996-1998 civil unrest, Montenegro, Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, Croatia, and Slovakia. He was a Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellow (1998-2000) and an American Swiss Foundation “Young Leader” (2006). He can be reached on Twitter or at dlmcadams@gmail.com

The NSA “has become a four-letter word in the US” and Americans are irritated, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, Daniel McAdams, told RT while commenting on a ruling which states that the agency's spying is legal.

RT:The hackers' congress which is underway
in Hamburg is seeking to raise awareness of encryption and
privacy. We're used to thinking about hacking as something
illegal. Are hackers becoming the new heroes of our time?

Daniel McAdams: When the government is doing
things that are illegal, it takes formerly illegal things like
hackers to try to protect us. The only worry is [whether these
are] all legitimate hackers or some [are] infiltrated. The whole
world of encryption is also somewhat concerning as well.

RT:Assange called on hackers to fight back
against the spy agencies. Is the job any easier these days, after
all these revelations?

DM: I think there has been an enormous increase
in awareness of what the government is doing. What is interesting
is that this ruling by Judge Pauley on Friday said the ACLU does
not have the right to challenge this collection of metadata
because it was gotten illegally because of revelations by
Snowden.

RT:Are you surprised by that ruling?

DM: The Washington Post called it ‘Kafkaesque,’
and I think that is right. One of their journalists pointed out
that because Congress meant for orders under Section 2.15 of the
Patriot Act to be secret, the ACLU has no right to challenge
that. The implications are incredible. It means that if the
government was illegally using 2.15 - something that we would
objectively say was illegal use of 2.15 - we could never
challenge that because we were not supposed to have known that
they were doing it. And it really is like Kafka, it is absolutely
chilling.

RT:How is the public mood in the US?

DM: Americans are very irritated. The NSA has
become a four-letter word in the US. People never thought about
it before. Someone like Peter King, chairman of the Homeland
Security Committee, said yesterday that he is glad of this ruling
because maybe Americans will now stop being so mean and angry
with NSA. I think that is wrong.

RT:How much damage have Snowden's leaks
done to America's foreign relations and its image?

DM: I don’t think a lot of the revelations about
the foreign spying should have been a surprise to anyone.
Americans are more concerned with the NSA getting out of control
in its monitoring of American citizens. That is where the outrage
is here in the US, and you find out that this bulk collection of
everything is fine and dandy. As Judge Pauley pointed out, this
was the government’s counter-punch against Al-Qaeda. Although
they can’t tell us of one single success that they had with this
monitoring of our communications.

RT:Do you think the governments that are
most affected by NSA surveillance will be able to stand up to the
US and put an end to the snooping?

DM: It is a subtle process that takes place over
time. The image of America has decreased in the eyes of the
world, if you look at polling data over the last decade. I think
things like the attack on Iraq that was obviously based on lies,
the disastrous invasion of Afghanistan, the US manipulating
elections, manipulating governments throughout the world - most
recently we see that in Africa and South Sudan - I think this is
a process and it is showing the rest of the world more and more
that US interventionism is certainly not a force for good. At
least not this day and age.